Most conventional carpets comprise a primary backing layer with fiber tufts in the form of cut or uncut loops extending upwardly from the backing to form a pile surface. For example, one type of carpeting includes decorative three-dimensional (3D) carpet where 3D woven microfiber polyester may be attached to a backing layer. Important features for carpet backing layers include flexibility, ease of processability, low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions as well as a good visual aesthetic.
Some conventional backing layers comprise rubber materials, such as nitrile butadiene rubber and styrene-butadiene rubber, to achieve the appropriate flexibility. However, these rubber materials can have undesirably high VOC emissions as well as increased processing time due to the need for extending curing times to form the carpet. Furthermore, such rubber materials are usually a black color, which can be aesthetically unattractive to a consumer. While polyolefins may be considered to be a desirable alternative for the backing layers since they can produce a transparent backing layer with high clarity and low VOC emissions, such backing layers comprising polyolefins can be too rigid to provide the required flexibility. Thus, there is a need for backing layer compositions which not only have the required flexibility, low VOC emission and good processability, but also are transparent for improved aesthetics.